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The Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics takes a fierce, perverse pride in refusing to understand the arguments of anyone who holds alternative ideas

What genuine attempt at political dialogue begins with a deliberate effort to misunderstand and mischaracterise the opposing side, misrepresent their motives and impugn their morals?

The answer, of course, is none. No respectful or productive discussion is possible when one side deliberately poisons the well in such a manner. Yet this is exactly what the Diversity Leadership Council at Gustavus Adolphus College did when they posted a series of fake, deliberately racist anti-illegal immigration posters around campus to spur a discussion and supposedly “educate” people about racism.

The “Diversity Leadership Council” at Gustavus Adolphus College has admitted to posting racially offensive posters around campus after the school’s Bias Response Team received multiple reports on the matter.

The signs, which are now being labeled a social experiment, notified “all white Americans” to report “any and all illegal aliens to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement” because “they are criminals.”

Provocatively declaring that “America is a white nation,” the flyers assert that it is the “civic duty” of white Americans to turn illegal immigrants in to law enforcement.

Because the only people who could possibly concerned about illegal immigration are white people, right? Nobody of any other skin tone or ethnicity could have a problem with turning a blind eye toward those who either illegally cross the border, overstay their legitimate visa or otherwise flout federal immigration law and then seek to use the length of their lawbreaking as an emotional cudgel to lobby for the normalisation of their status. Only racist white people.

Of course, as the predictable outrage crested and the Bias Response Team’s switchboard melted down under the sheer volume of calls from triggered students, it turned out that the whole thing was a fake. The Diversity Leadership Council coming forward with this smarmy statement:

At approximately 10 a.m. this morning, the Diversity Leadership Council (DLC), a student-run organization that represents 21 student groups on campus, posted signs in Beck and Olin Hall which attacked “Illegal Aliens” by suggesting that “they are criminals.” These posts were quickly torn down and shared with members of the campus community via the Facebook Group, Overheard at Gustavus.

It is the mission of the Diversity Leadership Council to formulate a collective voice when our organization recognizes the need to promote, preserve, and protect on-campus diversity. Thus, a subcommittee of the DLC, in collaboration with social justice theatre troupe I Am We Are, posted these signs and accompanying A-frames with bystander intervention tips in academic buildings on campus in an effort to help educate our peers and campus community about issues of bias, and the importance of being an active bystander.

We want to help put an end to bias-related incidents that happen on our campus, social media, and in our communities by forcing individuals to have dialogues about forms of hate and bias.

Social justice theatre troupe? Kill me now.

And so with a straight face, the Diversity Leadership Council of Gustavus Adolphus College told the student body and the wider public that their little stunt – portraying concern over illegal immigration as the exclusive preserve of white nationalists – was intended to foster “dialogue”.

Hey, kids? If you want to “help put an end to bias-related incidents that happen on our campus,” how about you address those incidents instead of distracting from them by making up a fake one? Seriously — just what is bringing awareness to a fake issue going to solve? It’s not going to help solve that issue, because — and sorry if I’m blowing your mind here — a problem has to actually exist in order for you to be able to solve it.

Now, I am not sure exactly what kinds of “bias-related incidents” are happening on that campus, but I do know that there being people on campus who felt so strongly that only white people should live in America that they were running around posting “AMERICA IS A WHITE NATION” flyers to help achieve that would be a serious one indeed. Presumably, this fake incident is on a completely different level from anything that is actually happening on that campus, which means that any “dialogues” related to it are on a completely different level, too. No doubt, these flyers must have left a lot of people feeling freaked out and threatened based on a false issue, all for the sake of having a discussion about something that didn’t even exist — and that’s about as disgusting as it gets.

Timpf’s objection is all well and good, but the real problem is not the fact that demented SJWs have now taken to crying “wolf” when starved of more legitimate opportunities for outrage (depressing though that is), but rather the fact that these campus leaders and activists are studying at university yet seemingly totally incapable of understanding the alternative arguments and perspectives which they so vociferously oppose.

One does not need to be a white nationalist to oppose illegal immigration. In fact, the vast majority of those who choose not to celebrate illegal immigration are perfectly welcoming and tolerant of immigrants, provided that they a) settle in America through the proper legal process, and b) assimilate into general society once they arrive. Are there racists and white nationalists as well? Of course there are. But while all white nationalists may object to illegal immigration, not all people who object to illegal immigration are white nationalists. Not even a plurality of them.

And yet rather than encouraging students to deeply understand an issue or argument from all sides, universities today seem to openly encourage an outcome-based approach to thinking about certain issues – for students to start at their desired endpoint (open borders and the normalisation of all current illegal immigrants) and then choose the facts (or Trumpian alternative facts) to back up that position.

I was always taught that in order to properly debate with somebody, let alone stand a chance of winning an argument against them, one must first seek to fully understand and be able to properly articulate the opposing argument, from the opponent’s perspective. Only armed with this knowledge can one properly analyse, refute and undermine the premises of their argument in order to comprehensively attack their conclusion.

By contrast, today’s campus activists – raised on the dogma of the Cult of Social Justice and Identity Politics – lack the capacity not only to understand opposing viewpoints in order to argue properly, they also seem unable even to assume the good faith of those who hold alternative views. They are so high on their own sense of self-righteousness that they lack the basic intellectual curiosity to seek to understand why somebody might disagree with their position. Hence objection to illegal immigration is described in the posters at Gustavus Adolphus College as being of concern only to white Americans who believe that “America is a white nation”.

But the truly depressing thing is that while the Social Justice Star Chamber of Gustavus Adolphus College may have gone slightly further than most in terms of fabricating fake racist posters to get outraged about “promote a discussion” about their pet topics, the simplicity of their thinking is mirrored across a vast portion of society and the media.

How harshly can one really criticise the social justice zealots at Gustavus Adolphus College when the American mainstream media is also in the business of deliberately conflating legal and illegal immigration so as to portray opposition to the latter as racist-inspired hostility to the former?

What the Diversity Leadership Council did was bad, but in many ways it was no worse than similar insidious efforts made by politicians and the media to normalise illegal immigration and portray anybody with legitimate concerns as either heartless or a dangerous extremist. And at least it is clear – by virtue of their limited intelligence and rank amateurism – what the Gustavus Adolphus activists are up to with their tawdry little campaign. The bias of political officials and supposedly objective journalists is often far more subtle, and therefore harder to detect.

The same cannot be said of the mindless open borders stance of the Gustavo Adolphus activists, and the naked stupidity and bad faith currently on display at that Minnesota college.

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2 thoughts on “Tales From The Safe Space, Part 52 – Gustavus Adolphus College, Illegal Immigration And A Failure Of Intellectual Curiosity”

Douglas CarterMarch 29, 2017 / 3:58 PM

It’s a problem on all sides of the debating divide, but there’s nothing that infuriates some sections of activists across many fronts quite so much, than the refusal of their perceived opponents to actually be in possision of the opinions they’d prefer to attribute to them.

Quite. Someone posted an amusing picture on Twitter the other day – two giant scarecrows in a field, with the caption “every argument on Twitter these days” beneath, i.e. two straw men. I think it is increasingly true. We (or at least many of us) are losing the ability to debate the opponents and ideas we actually have, preferring to debate those we *wish* we had.